


Un(Ravel)ed

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23883757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Klinger encounters Winchester before he is transferred to the 4077th.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	Un(Ravel)ed

**Un-Ravel-ed**

The song is Adagio Assai, but the man to whom it calls, the man it draws even though he feels too broken for another step, doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know, either, that it isn’t being played particularly well - competently rather than rapturously - on a borrowed piano in an embassy hotel. 

Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger only knows that the plaintive notes - like silver coinage tossed away into far, dark depths, never to be recovered - match something inside of him, so he follows them - each glassy plink another signpost on the dark trail - until he he has come to rest in the darkened bar. His footsteps, though soft, break into the musician’s strange, midnight concentration and his hands lift from the keys like wings being folded at the onset of night. 

“Please don’t stop on my account.” He sees the insignia on the collar and straightens. “Sir.” 

The man nods but once, the gesture severe, his blue-grey eyes cutting and exotic; encountering those eyes is like brushing against pale thorns. His hand descends. The song continues. It unspools haltingly, his soul exerting drag and then darting forward as those fingers speed up. The Tokyo moon sends icy beams through the skylight; the light flashes on his fingers; he seems to wear the combination of light and shadow like expensive gloves. 

When he has finished, Klinger wants to applaud but fears that the sound of a single pair of hands will not do justice to the piece. Instead, he removes his hat and holds it to his heart for a moment in a gesture of respect. It might look a little overblown - melodrama standing in for the real thing - but the moon makes small, cold flames appear in his brass buttons, wink in the insignia on the hat, and in the darkness of his hair; the warm regard in his eyes makes a heady contrast. 

“Thank you, Major.” 

“My pleasure Corporal?” His voice lifts on the last word, indicating a question. 

“Klinger, sir. Maxwell Klinger.” 

“Charles Emerson Winchester.” 

They shake hands. 

“My playing has never summoned anyone before, Corporal. When I turned I thought for a moment you might be an apparition.”

“I can imagine worse gigs for a haunt,” Klinger confesses. “At least you’d hear some swell songs!” 

A smile glimmers on Charles’ lips for a moment as he contemplates what Ravel might think of being dubbed “swell.” “Are you staying at the Plum?” 

“Me? Oh, no, Major. I just sort of, uh, followed the music. I’m here on R and R but couldn’t sleep.” He glances toward the patio and the street beyond it. “I should probably be getting back.” 

There is something here. Something just below the surface. Charles doesn’t have words for it, but it’s a quality shared between the song and the Corporal. A species of pain. He has sworn an oath to do no harm. Does not said oath contain a subtext: heal pain where thy shall find it? 

He stalks behind the bar as if it belongs to him. This attitude - a colonizer’s look, a conquistador’s touch - has served him well in the past. It prevents Klinger from questioning the crystal he now holds or the liquor it contains. The wine owes its existence to golden plums harvested late from branches that succumbed to a glittering encasement of frost days after being divested of their fruits. Charles knows this and is pleased when Klinger smiles at the sweet taste. 

Klinger makes a vague gesture that encompasses the wine, the moon, the departed notes. “Drink _and_ a song - it’s too much, Major.” 

“Then pay me back.” The tone is neutral but the words set off alarm bells; famous for wearing a dress most of the time, Klinger has heard his share of propositions. But then Charles goes nimbly on, “Tell me what has you so glum on leave that you’re listening to music in the dark.” 

To his surprise and alarm, Klinger turns the tables on him. “What has you sad enough to stay up playing it?” 

Charles pushes back from the table they have claimed, about to launch into dignified, nose-in-air, upper class denial. 

Then the corporal cocks his head at him, bright eyes seeming to read, “Gotcha!” 

“I am not _sad_ ,” Charles begins, careful as crossing a floor littered with shattered glass. “Tokyo is too regal a city to permit one to sink into fruitless melancholy.”

Klinger swirls the golden liquid in his glass, enjoys the contained whirlpool that is all sweetness and the color of a harvest moon reflected in a cup of cider. He has strolled under similar moons down the streets of his beloved home city, Toledo, feeling safe and brave and hopeful under the glow. He hasn’t felt those three emotions - even singly - once while stationed in Korea; he misses that version of himself. “I wish you had been around to tell me that earlier, sir. I’m going to kick myself when I get back to my unit for wasting my time... but everything seems,” he waves a hand, uncertain of how to express the grey fog that’s entered into his soul. “Far away. Not part of me.”

Charles has never played psychiatrist; no one has ever come out of the dark at the sound of his playing, either. “When you set out from camp, what kind of amusements were you hoping for?” 

Klinger shrugs. “Actually, it wasn’t really a planned trip. We, uh, we got a new CO. He’s fed up with me, so he sent me away so he can decide what to do with me.” 

Charles takes in the slender form, the well-polished brass. This Klinger doesn’t look large enough or aggressive enough (Charles has noted the well-manicured hands) to cause the kind of problems that merit being sent away. “My god, man, what on Earth have you been up to?” he asks with humor evident in his voice. 

It has to be the wine; under the sweetness there is an alcoholic content capable of sending even practiced drinkers straight past buzzed and right into tanked. Klinger isn’t the latter, but he can feel the stuff, and the normal caution he might exercise before a stranger is wrapped in cottony gauze. “It, uh, it might be easier to show you, Major.” 

He removes his wallet from his back pocket and then removes a photograph from inside. Timid fingers pass it to Winchester. Charles doesn’t see - not at first - and Klinger is forced to quietly elaborate. “It’s me, Major. I, uh, I don’t want to be here. I’m scared all the time.” 

“So you found some skirts to hide behind?” To Klinger’s surprise, Charles’ voice isn’t unkind; it may even be teasing. “You know that tradition holds that the skirts you hide in really ought to be worn by another.” 

Klinger chuckles. “Well, they’re no help with hiding, honestly. They just make me stand out. It started because I was bucking for a discharge. A psycho. A section eight.”

“But it did not end there?” Charles guesses. 

Klinger shakes his dark head. “I haven’t gotten out but the dresses... I guess they’ve become a sort of shield. If Colonel Potter puts the kaibosh on them, I’m going to be a shivering mess again! So, you see, I’m kind of afraid of going back to my unit, because I don’t know which _me_ the colonel’s going to allow.”

“But it’s hard to enjoy being away, because your mind is focused on your CO’s decision?” 

“Right. So what about you? You said you weren’t sad, but you’re definitely _something_.” 

“You say that as if playing something no one else wants to hear into an empty room after midnight strikes you as odd.” 

Klinger shrugs. “Not section 8 odd, sir. But I never knew music could _hurt_ before.” 

His smile is slow; it hurts too. “I envy you, then. I think I’ve always known that notes could ache as well as expand to hold whatever darkness you wanted to fill them with.” He smiles at a private jest. “At least the sharps and the flats.” 

“But if that’s true, sir, then the pain would be _out_ of you.” 

Charles’ eyes narrow; is the corporal being cheeky? But no. Klinger’s face is guileless. Charles begins to laugh. Exorcism by piano? Why the hell not? He _is_ less lonely; Klinger is here now. 

“Well, if you’re right, then it’s here. Should we go elsewhere and leave it behind?” 

Klinger shrugs, but then gestures at a street gone quiet as it waits for dawn. “Where can we go?” 

Charles gives a surprised look at his watch. “My, it is late, isn’t it? But I know one bar that remains open.”

He leads Klinger not out, but up. Inside his room, a swank suite with real art on the walls, he pours them both drinks from bottles that Klinger knows are beyond his price range. 

“So it was just the _piano_ you were missing up here,” Klinger jokes. 

“The piano. And an audience apparently.” His gaze is steady, open, fearless. Klinger can’t help but admire that. He’s been propositioned by men before, of course, but they were furtive about it; sometimes they even seemed disappointed in themselves. 

“You don’t need to thank me for listening, Major. It was my pleasure.”

Charles dares it then. He reaches out and strokes his hand. It is a light touch but it strikes the right notes. In answer, Klinger catches his hand and lifts it to his mouth. When he kisses down the long fingers, Charles shudders. He doesn’t suck on them, not quite, just molds his mouth over the tips, teases with wetness and warmth. Charles uses his free hand to grip the edge of the table. “Corporal...”

“Max,” Klinger gently corrects. 

“Max.” His mouth is very dry. “Would you, would you care to change into something, ah, more comfortable?” He gestures at a robe hanging on a coat rack. 

Klinger lifts an eyebrow. “You keep accessories around for wandering corporals, Major? Or are you trying to get a section 8, too?” 

Charles chuckles, a sound as rich as the stuff in their glasses. “Hardly. I bought it as a gift for my sister. But if it will take your mind off of your problems with your CO, I’ll be happy to buy a replacement .” 

Klinger hesitates. He’s been teased and tormented for his attempts at escaping army life, especially by “straight” men who wanted to lift his skirts. He’s never been courted before, but when Charles stands and holds the robe out to him, it feels like courting. What can he do but disrobe? 

And when he’s covered in silk, he does feel better. He feels better still when long fingers play in that silk, molding it over the muscles of his chest, dancing the line of his waist, accepting the maleness of him, but accepting, also, the sweetness in him. Charles closes the distance between them and claims his mouth. His claim is not contested; Klinger’s mouth opens partly in welcome and partly in awe; Maxwell has never been kissed like this. Charles’ tongue is everywhere, pushing in, sampling, taking his time. 

When he leaves off, his voice is not unaffected by the kisses they’ve been sharing. “I could finish you just with kissing,” he marvels. 

“Definitely,” Klinger agrees. “But it would be a shame not to feel more of you.” 

The invitation is accepted and Charles dims the lights before undressing. When he’s back in Klinger’s arms, the corporal murmurs approval and appreciation. Charles shivers. He is drunk with the feel of silk against his naked chest. But silk is slippery and Klinger slides loose to kneel before him; when he looks up, Charles moans and anchors himself with the back of a nearby chair. He sees the silvery flash of Klinger’s smile before he bows his head and begins the work of getting all of hm inside his mouth. 

Charles fights to keep his eyes open. He wants to see the way those lips move up and down his length, the way Klinger’s entire body bobs with the accelerating rhythm he’s committed himself to. When he gives vocal encouragement, praising that eager mouth, Klinger answers with sounds meant to urge him to his peak; he seems as excited about the inevitable conclusion as Charles is and the doctor cannot remember another time, another lover, who so delighted in his pleasure. 

Painful as it is to call a halt, he pulls back just seconds from climax and pants, gripping the chair. 

Klinger is still on his knees, lips wet and warmly red. “Did I lose it?” he asks, frustrated with himself if that is the case. 

“Not ‘tall.” Charles manages to sound dignified even though he’s breathing hard and still very much erect. 

“Then why the pause?” 

“I want you to join me.”

Klinger smiles disbelievingly. “You’re really close, Major.”

“Indeed. I take it that you don’t think I can transport you to a similar state before you finish me?”

“I think it would be unlikely.” 

Charles grins, accepting the challenge, and beckons him to the bed. Without preamble, he crushes his mouth to the corporal’s swollen lips. Reaching beneath the robe he dressed him in, he finds Klinger’s neglected sex and claims every sweet inch. His touch is so sure and so knowing that Klinger actually tries to escape it; he’s never been subject to this depth of sensation. 

“My God, Major,” he manages. 

Charles relents a little. “Not quite. Just a surgeon. We are said to have good hands as a rule, however.” 

Warm, stunned tears are leaking from Klinger’s eyes. He both wants to feel that way again and is afraid; it is as if Charles drew all he is to the surface with just a few touches. Seeing his bewilderment, Charles eases him back down, guides Klinger’s hand back to him so that their motions will echo one another. 

“Slower this time,” he promises. Even so, sweat breaks out on the corporal’s face and Charles feels a flattered sort of wonder; no one has ever responded to him like this. Is he better at this than he remembers? Or is there something special about Klinger that causes him to feel so fully and so deeply? 

There is no answer in the dark eyes riveted on his face, eyes pleading simultaneously for this to be brought to a shattering close and for it to last the remaining length of the night. “You’re very beautiful like this,” he tells Klinger, tracing his mouth, smoothing back his sweaty hair. 

Klinger manages to chuckle. “Then _you_ made me this way. I shoulda seen, the way your hands were on those keys...”

Charles wants to protest; he’s an inexpert musician, technically skilled but not gifted; until tonight he certainly didn’t known he could play a _person_. Inspired, he begins again, knowing just what to do to make Klinger arch off the bed and cry out for him. And, in a sort of musical felicity, that cry rings against something in Winchester and pushes _him_ over the edge. His voice and his trembling echoes his lover’s and Klinger can’t believe that seeing him come undone can possibly be enough. 

He kisses Charles’ brow after. “I feel like you kinda got cheated there, Major.” 

“If you could have felt what I was feeling, you would know that was not the case.” He looks on him with soft eyes. “Can I assume that Tokyo is now somewhat redeemed for you?” 

“Well, I did get this nice robe...”

Charles tackles him and they dissolve into giggling, wrestling like children. When they come up for air, Klinger volleys the question back. “What about you, Major? No more painful songs for awhile, I hope?” 

It is the physician’s turn to be playful. “I don’t know. If such songs contain magic enough to summon someone like you, it would be a shame not to play them.” 

Klinger gestures at himself: the robe, the gypsy grin. “Take it from me, Major. There is no one else like me.”

Charles believes this. “I know you must return to your unit, Corporal, but I would like it very much if you would agree to stay at least until morning.”

The shyness of this request touches Klinger. Still, he can’t resist the jest that rises to his lips. “Major, if you think I’m capable of standing, getting dressed, and walking back, you really weren’t paying attention.”

They sleep in each other’s arms. Before he returns to a cheaper hotel and leaves for Uijeongbu, Klinger presses his lips to the surgeon’s sleeping cheek and says, “Thank you, Charles.” 

***

Six weeks later, Charles has the misfortune to beat a superior officer at cribbage, to the tune of nearly $700. This leads to his temporary reassignment to MASH 4077 in Uijeongbu. 

There, he is permanently assigned when Colonel Potter decides he needs him. He rages, pleads, and bargains, but gets nowhere. Finally, his luggage is placed in the aptly named Swamp, carried in by a figure in yellow gingham and clattering heels. 

“What was that creature?” he asks his new tentmates. 

Hawkeye seems delighted with his discomfort. “Corporal Max Klinger. He’s one of a kind.” 

“He’s bucking for a psycho,” BJ explains. “You know, a section 8.” 

“He has my vote,” Charles says before unpacking. 

***

Screaming at Radar O’Reilley does not provide Charles with the desired connection to Tokyo, but he is able to secure directions to a closer destination when he asks - in a softer tone, this time. 

Sure of his way, he knocks on the door to Klinger’s pop-up dwelling. “Corporal?”

“Major? Come on in. Can I do something for you?”

Charles feels his heart sink but enters anyway; perhaps there will be no silver lining to his unwanted reassignment. “I, ah,” his eloquent tongue fails him. “Corporal, you acted like I was a stranger back there. I’m quite prepared to respect your privacy, but an hello would not have gone amiss.”

“Major, if I had said that I close my eyes every night and try to remember exactly how you made me feel so I can dream about it because it was the best I’ve ever felt, captains Pierce and Hunnicutt would have razzed you about it until the end of time.” He gives him a look that is hopeful, a little shy. “Besides, it was one night. I couldn’t be sure you’d want me to say hello.” _Or anything else, for that matter._

Charles ignores the blush that suddenly rises in his cheeks. “Ah, well. That’s different, then. I apologize for presuming.” His eyes rake over the man. “I see that you worked things out with your CO.” His gesture takes in Klinger’s outfit - hem to accessories. 

“Because of you. After, well, after Tokyo I felt braver, so I marched in and I made my case. He won’t give me a discharge, but he does offer me constructive criticism on my clothes now, which is kinda nice.” 

“I’m pleased to have been of assistance.” 

“How have you been?”

“No sad songs. Even Ravel no longer sounds quite so forlorn to me, because it makes me think of you. I have, however been quite unable to replace Honoria’s robe.”

Klinger’s dark eyes shine. “Why’s that?”

“Every time I go to select one, I feel the silk for quality and something quite indecent happens.” 

The confession and the pink shimmer in Charles’ cheeks warms him. “Maybe I should go with you. I’m good at picking out fabrics.” 

“You just want to see me undone by a scrap of cloth,” Charles accuses, voice fond. 

“I do want to see you. Can I? Now that you’re assigned here? Please say yes, Major.” 

“It may be the only way I survive this place,” Winchester admits. “You didn’t think I’d leave you _just_ to your dreaming, did you?” 

Klinger translates this in his mind as: _You got to me, too._ He doesn’t quite bat his lashes, but he’s sure Charles can hear everything he’s feeling in his voice. “The O club has a piano, you know. And Radar owes me a favor so I’ll bet I can get the key.” 

“It would be a pity to lose the civilizing force of music in this place,” Charles agrees. “Shall we say tomorrow night?” 

Klinger agrees, thinking, _Any and every night you want, Major_. 

END!


End file.
